​Out of all the dumpsters that could have beenempty, all the weather that could have bloomedover the prairie and ruined me, all the carsthat could have sped by without hesitating and left meon the fog-line nameless forever. The trainsthat could have taken my legs. The hobosthat could have pulled a switchblade and opened melike a flood enfolding the red North Dakota clay.

Out of all the hazards we pass throughin amazement, all the stories we tell of luckand good fortune and prayer and survival, it is alwaysour own lungs that dry up and darken,our own miles that straighten, our own hungerthat wanes. The Lord gives us mountainsand we fail to mine out that grandness.The Lord gives us trains and we waste those distancestransporting coal. Some say the world is broken,some say the Good Lord has forsaken our dreams,but I say it is our own throat that growsthe cancer, our own asthma that blackens our breathto a wheeze. And the truth is, the mile-long trainwill always crawl past. The socket-fixed gazeof the owl's skull will always turn perfectlybackwards. We will always be bodies among ghosts.And what is important to them is not how we rideon the westbound freighter, not how we shiver,not how we crawl crooked and thinand climb yet again into the trembling eye-hole.It is not about suffering. It is not about fear.We must peer out from inside the owl's eye.Watch the coal-dust cook in the wind-eddies.Watch it linger. Watch it spiral thinly as it bruisesthe blue-faded mind of the buffalo sky.We must be the pupil that swells in ​the coming darkness.The cargo worth carrying across the distances.